


i can handle whatever i stumble upon

by irnan



Series: on a thin chain of moments and something like faith [4]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Family, Fluff and Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-14
Updated: 2013-09-14
Packaged: 2017-12-26 13:54:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/966707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irnan/pseuds/irnan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jason's not as hopeless as he wishes he was at being an older brother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i can handle whatever i stumble upon

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Bob Dylan. It totally is a series. I can admit it.

**(i – cass)**

He came across Cass near the gargoyle where they’d first met; she had her feet up on the ledge and was drawing one boot off and grimacing.

Jason grimaced himself. Three hours left before the meet he was meaning to crash; it would take… forty minutes to get across town and prep, and he needed to drop by a couple places first. She hadn’t made any sign that she knew he was there.

But Jason had seen Cass take a _bullet_ without flinching. He dropped off the top roof level, jogged along a parapet, and swung across the street to join her.

“Hey,” he said, folding himself up beside her.

“Hey,” she said, yanking her sock off and holding up her foot and rolling her ankle. Her toes were bandaged, and Jason thought that was blood on it.

“The hell have you done to yourself,” he said.

She sighed. “Ballet.”

Jason blinked. Then he reached up and pulled the helmet off. His hair was getting long again; he pushed it off his forehead with an impatient flick of his fingers. “Ballet.”

“Yup.”

“Ballet does that?” He pointed at her foot.

Cass looked up at him and nodded ruefully.

“Wow,” said Jason. “I mean, I genuinely didn’t know that.”

“Neither did I,” said Cass. “Dick bought me lessons. I love it, but… I wasn’t… expecting this.” She propped her heel on the ledge and drew her other leg up to her chest to unlace her second boot. Jason shook his head.

“Masochistic,” he said.

“It’s a sport,” said Cass, “like anything else.”

“Sport’s one thing,” said Jason. “Training’s one thing.”

She laughed.

“Like planges. Ridiculous.”

“What’s a plange?”

“Oh, man.” Jason laughed. “It’s an acrobatic thing? You sort of – it’s hard to explain, you sort of spin your whole body when you’re hanging on the rings? And it dislocates your shoulders every time you go round and pops them back in again. At least I _think_ that’s the one. I think there’s a couple tricks like that.”

“Ouch!”

“Yeah. Dick showed me once, and Bruce came in and caught us and tore him a new one.”

Cass laughed.

“It was not funny,” said Jason, grinning. “Dick was pretty pissed. Said it wasn’t any of Bruce’s business how he ruined his health.”

Cass slumped against his shoulder, still laughing. “I remember when they used to fight sometimes,” she said. “Tim does too.” Her hair smelled like gunsmoke, and when he turned his head he could see a bruise forming just by her hairline, above the angle of her mask.

“Seems they’re over that,” he said neutrally.

“Dick doesn’t want Damian to see,” said Cass. “I think… he underestimates him. Not, you know” – she gestured at the city lying below them – “but in here.” She tapped her chest.

“He’s never raised a kid before,” said Jason. He wasn’t sure if he was feeling oddly protective of Dick – unlikely – or Damian – even less likely – but… well, he sort of did. When Bruce and Dick fought, mountain ranges got levelled. Whatever else Damian had done, he didn’t deserve to get caught in that crossfire.

“True,” said Cass. “Ugh.” She flexed her feet again and sighed. “Are you busy? I want… take out.”

“No,” said Jason. “Curry? There’s a great Indian two blocks away.”

“I can tell when you’re lying.”

“About the Indian?”

She didn’t bother to answer. He felt her tense slightly, as if in preparation for drawing away.

Come to think of it, for Cass, that probably _was_ an answer.

Jason sat in silence for a time, watching her flex her feet, the lights of Gotham behind them. There was a right thing to say and a wrong thing to say and a dangerous thing to say: two of these were the same.

He sighed.

There was what he wanted to say, too.

“I’d rather have the curry,” he said.

Cass said, “Me too.”

They had the curry.

 

**(ii – damian)**

It was the first time Jason had ever been ambushed in a grocery store. You had to give Little D props for originality. Jason turned round in the vegetable aisle and nearly tripped over an eleven-year-old ninja, bristling with indignation and brandishing a large book.

Jason felt it rather undercut Damian’s threatening appearance for him to still be wearing his Gotham Academy school uniform, but that was a suggestion best kept to himself.

“OK…” he said.

Damian poked him in the stomach with a corner of his book. It was Fox’s Alexander biography. “How long have you been in touch with my mother?” he demanded.

“Uh…” said Jason, taken aback. “Since she rescued me off the streets and looked after me and stuck me in a Lazarus Pit to restore my memories, like five or six years ago?”

Damian’s jaw dropped. Jason hadn’t thought that people really did that in real life – it was such an overused expression – but the kid’s mouth actually, literally fell open in surprise. It gave him a weird sort of pang. Would it have been so hard for Talia to have said something to the kid?

“I didn’t realise you didn’t know that,” he said.

“Ha!” said Damian. It seemed a sort of catch-all exclamation for when Damian didn’t know what else to say.

They stared at each other.

“So… d’you like it?” Jason nodded at the book.

“I’ve read more biographies of Alexander than you’ve had hot dinners,” Damian snapped.

There was a lot Jason could’ve said in reply to that, but he found he didn’t really have the energy. He’d come out to get food, and maybe a newspaper: starting a fight with the ninja kitten in a grocery store didn’t sound particularly appealing.

Especially not when his stomach was grumbling.

Jason sighed. “I don’t doubt it,” he said, and leaned over Damian’s head to get some carrots. “Did you really come all the way over here just to start a fight?”

“Of course not. It would _hardly_ be a real contest.”

“Yeah you did,” said Jason. “S’up, little D, Princess Timmy won’t be provoked so you came looking for another target?”

Damian’s lip curled disgustedly, but – Jason thought he might be on to something. The boy wasn’t meeting his eyes anymore, gaze fixed somewhere around the region of Jason’s chin. When Jason started moving down the aisle, Damian followed him.

“You really gotta get over this belief that the only way to prove your abilities is by puttin’ everyone else down,” said Jason. “How old were you when Talia took me in, five, six?” He considered it while he bagged an onion and some apples. “She probably only did it cause you activated her maternal instincts.”

Damian’s face went stony. “If there’s one person in this city whose advice I feel I can safely pass on taking, Todd, it’s you.”

“Well, I’m sure no one’s ever accused you of sugar-coating,” said Jason. Hmm, to ham or not to ham? What the hell, why not. And bacon. And sausages. And he sort of fancied a steak.

“You can’t possibly be planning on eating all that,” said Damian.

“Not in one sitting,” said Jason. “Why don’t you slouch off and go finish your homework or something?”

“You’re only a packet of mince and some tomatoes away from a decent bolognaise,” said Damian. “That’s if you’re capable of cooking anything so sophisticated. Were you just going to fry all the meat up and shove some frozen chips on?”

“We call ‘em fries in the US,” said Jason.

“ _French_ fries,” said Damian, rolling his eyes. “What’s _French_ about them?”

“I never worked that out,” Jason admitted. “It’s not like potatoes are from Europe, or anything.”

“Exactly,” said Damian.

“You’re gonna keep on following me around the whole store, aren’t you.”

“I’m fascinated. I didn’t know you did anything as human as eat.”

 “Well, I’m not _actually_ a zombie, so munching on brains sounds disgusting. Then again, I could make an exception for yours.”

Damian sniffed. The look on his face suggested strongly that he was fighting down a grin. “And then what would Mother say?”

Jason began to have the sinking feeling that imparting that bit of information had been a severe strategic mistake.

 

**(iii – tim)**

“I don’t have tiiiiiiiime for this,” Tim groaned, rubbing his hands through his hair. “I’m supposed to be a college student. I’m supposed to be in _class_.”

“Hey, I did not ask you to turn this into some kind of joint venture bullshit,” said Jason. “Sling your hook, Replacement, go on.” He waved a hand majestically.

Tim flipped him off.

Jason laughed a now-familiar scratchy, smoker’s-coughy laugh and settled deeper into his chair. The table between them was buried in print-outs and blueprints and Tim’s two – two! – tablets and Jason’s own laptop; there were three coffee mugs of indeterminate age balanced in a tower in one corner, and a crumpled city map of uptown Gotham blossomed as a centrepiece.

“Anyway,” said Tim. “ _You_ bought all the properties up and _stole_ my _ideas_. If this is a joint venture, you started it.”

“Sorry, is it _actionable_?” Jason asked blandly, waving the sheaf of plans for the legal services centre under Tim’s nose.

Tim snatched at them.

Jason snatched them back. “Go on, push off back to campus instead of doing something constructive with your time,” he said. “When you see Steph, tell her I said hi.”

“I’m not enabling your acquaintance,” said Tim. “It’ll only end in tears.”

“Yeah – yours.”

“Well I doubt they’ll be Damian’s.”

Jason snorted. “They’ve been pulling a lot of cases together lately.”

“Yeah,” said Tim. He grinned.

Jason looked at him.

Tim twitched his eyebrows up, still grinning.

Jason sighed. “Go on then.”

“I’m pretty sure Dick and Babs are in the process of getting back together.”

“ _Back_ together!”

“You didn’t know they used to be – no, they broke up before –“ Tim skidded to a halt, feeling himself going red all over – talk about putting his foot in it. And everything had been going so well. He held his breath for an instant, waiting for it all to go wrong.

“Before I came back to Gotham,” Jason said steadily. The corner of his mouth quirked up. “Practicing walking on your eggshells?”

Tim scratched at the back of his head. “Well, there _was_ that time you tried to kill me.”

Jason pulled a face.

“… yeah.”

Funny how they hadn’t brought that up in nearly three months of thrashing out their plans for uptown and the Neon Knights Foundation. Tam had tried hinting at it to Tim once, having apparently heard the story from Steph, but Tim, in an uncharacteristic fit of bull-headed optimism and blind faith, had decided to ignore all the usual cautious (i.e., sensible) counter-arguments. His childhood idol wanted – or if not wanted exactly, was at least prepared – to work with him, and Tim was sick of looking in the mouth of every gift horse that came his way. Cass had promised him that Jason was currently neither crazy nor murderous. Tim had taken that and run with it. Even if Jason ruined it in the end, there would still be this: a few months one summer when they had almost liked each other – when Tim had been sure, for a little while, that in some alternate universe where things had gone differently they would’ve been brothers just as surely as he and Dick were.

The fact that he was applying this pathetically sappy not-logic to his not-relationship with a dude who had once tried to murder him cause he felt their father didn’t love him enough was an inconvenient truth that Tim, frankly, preferred not to dwell on.

Also Dick and Babs and Alfred all approved of it and it was making Bruce severely twitchy, and Tim was sure this list of reasons was speaking _volumes_ about his emotional maturity.

Tim said, “I – uh –“

Jason said, “I’m not sure if I’m sorry for it.”

Tim froze. Jason didn’t seem to notice; his voice was low and his words uncertain. “I’m not sure about – anything I did, back then. It’s like – eh, I don’t know what it’s like. I’m not gonna try and pretend it wasn’t my conscious choice, cause it was. But I know I can’t think about it too much.”

“Or what?” Tim asked quietly.

Jason drew a long, thoughtful breath. “I don’t know,” he said. Lopsided, bitter grin. “Something up here turns off.” He gestured at his temple.

“Like being triggered,” said Tim, thinking of Kon and his friend’s old fear of what he called his Luthor-genes.

“Lazarus Pit crazy,” said Jason. “Don’t go feeling sorry for me, Replacement, just because –“

“You dug your way out of your own grave that one time a couple years ago?”

“Ow.”

Tim shrugged. _One wrong move_ , he thought, and fought down the urge to rub the scar at his neck. _Any move at all_. Were there any right moves?

Maybe just one.

“I used to talk to you.”

Jason moved at last, uncrossing his legs and crossing them the other way. “Babs told me.”

Tim looked away. There was only so long you could stare at those eyes. In some ways they’d seen more than Bruce ever had.

“This,” said Jason. “What we’re doing here.” He laid his hand palm down on the blueprints. Tim studied the blunt fingers, the colour of Jason’s skin: he had not had freckles three months ago, Tim was sure of it, but there they were, scattered pale across the back of Jason’s hand, trailing around and between the scars on his knuckles.  “It’s worth it. It feels…” Jason drew a long breath. “Good. _Useful_. All that money I ended up with – I didn’t want it to just lie around collecting interest, like Bruce’s does. That – that wouldn’t be right.”

“Not after what you did to get it?” Tim asked shrewdly.

Jason looked surprised; then thoughtful. “Huh. I guess?”

Tim let his own hands drop into the centre of the table. They lay curled together beside Jason’s, smaller, thinner, but no less strong.

He stepped up to the Rubicon.

“Yeah,” he said. Grinned a bit. “I’m enjoying it too.”

Jason shook his head. He was smiling, though. Tim took that as encouragement.

“It’s good to have my brother back.”

Crossed it.

Jason stretched his fingers minutely. “Back,” he said.

“Back,” said Tim.


End file.
